Monday, February 5, 2018

My favorite Ed Tech event of the year is Spring CUE in Palm Springs. Not only do I get to go and learn, but I get to hang out with all my amazing PLN people face to face. These people are online colleagues, but I'm proud to call many of them friends as well. Every January, I start to get excited because I know CUE is just around the corner. This year, I'm extra excited! Why? #SketchCUE!!

I'm a sketchnoter and the Spring CUE conference is when I do most of my sketchnoting. So many amazing sessions and keynotes - I can't help it! I LOVE to sketchnote, but I don't consider myself an artistic person. It has taken me years to practice and dial in my sketching skills and I still don't consider myself artistic. I do, however, feel confident enough in my sketches to share them out now, but it has been a journey of practice! I don't know about you, but I love to see other people's sketchnotes. The way the learning is made visual in so many different styles just blows my mind.

Last year, I participated in an event that took place after Spring CUE called #Sketch50. A bunch of people joined together on Twitter and did a sketch a day for 50 days. This sketching practice helped me so much! Not only did it give me practice, but it also gave me a library of little sketches that I can copy and paste and use in the future. This got me thinking...what if we did some sketch practice leading up to CUE? Something simple and fun that would help us brush the dust off our sketching tools and get some practice in before CUE comes around. I reached out to fellow sketchnoters Wanda Terral (@wterral) and Cate Tolnai (@CateTolnai) and #SketchCUE was born!

Here's how it works:

From February 5th until March 9th, there will be a prompt tweeted out using the #SketchCUE hashtag each day (weekdays only). We will have 25 simple prompts that will help you practice your sketching skills. When it is all said and done, you will have a whole library of sketches that can inspire your future notes. If you sketch digitally, and your app of choice allows it, you might even be able to copy and paste your sketches directly into your future notes.

Steps to participate:

Watch the #SketchCUE hashtag every weekday from February 5th to March 9th for the daily prompts. (I will tweet them out, so you could also follow me - @TeachingTechNix.)

Sketch using your tools of choice. This could be on paper or digitally.

Tweet your sketch out to the community using the #SketchCUE hashtag before the end of the day for each prompt.

That's it. It's easy and it will be so much fun! I hope you join in with us during the next few weeks as you prepare to #SketchCUE at #CUE18.